Suchergebnisse

According to realist approach, three most modern influential states Russia, China and US strive to gain maximum freedom in the international arena while retaining independence in domestic policies. The author suggests that a different constructivist approach should be used. Paying attention to the peculiarities of norms and acknowledging the influence of domestic policy on the norms, this approach allows to explain the differences in understanding sovereignty in different states. The political elites of Russia and China tend to consider that the strong central power secures the Westphalian sovereignty, while the historic experience of the US formed the ideal of decentralized power. Aiming at population protection, democracy promotion, terrorist persecution and maintaining US hegemony, American liberal internationalists and neocons are in general eager to step away from the traditional understanding of sovereignty. Russia and China consider sovereignty from the absolutist standpoint, though they have made a number of concessions to the changing norms of territorial integrity and humanitarian intervention. The article proves that the Russian, American and Chinese understanding of sovereignty (both domestic sovereignty and interdependence sovereignty in S.Krasner's terms) is changing with the emergence of common interests and the necessity to counteract new global threats.

"For more than a century Russia has aspired to recognition as a great power in the Asia Pacific, yet Russian leaders from the tsarist through the Soviet and post-Soviet eras have encountered repeated setbacks in the region. At certain points Russia appeared poised to make a breakthrough, but outcomes never matched expectations. Structural factors constraining Russian regional aspirations include geographic challenges, demographic imbalances, and persistent low levels of economic development. Institutional factors-the hyper-centralized, secretive character of Russian foreign policy making, bureaucratic competition, and dominance of a single powerful executive-have been critical in shaping Russian foreign policy toward the Pacific. Agency in the form of unique personality traits of autocratic executives, and their receptiveness to ideas of imperial dominance, expansion, and national identity are important, but the persistence of certain patterns in Russia's Asia policy suggest even the most powerful autocrat faces constraints. Starting with Russian imperial expansion in the late nineteenth century, this study assesses Soviet Asian projects during the Cold War, then considers diplomatic, economic and military dimensions of Vladimir Putin's pivot toward the Asia Pacific. The conceptual approach is analytically eclectic, combining realism's focus on military and economic dimensions of power with a constructivist's attention to questions of national identity"--

The five Central Asian states of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan constitute an area of increasing importance in global politics. The region currently serves as the main route for transporting American and NATO supplies and personnel into Afghanistan. Its Turkic Muslim peoples share ethnic and religious roots with China's Uighurs in neighboring Xinjiang, where some Uighurs have connections to the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, fueling Beijing's already acute fears of terrorism and separatism. Perhaps most importantly, the Caspian basin holds immense reserve

Russian leaders consider the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) a Western liberal democratic norm that erodes sovereignty and threatens Russia's great power status. They suspect the United States and Europe use R2P as a means of effecting regime changes that support their national interests, not as a purely altruistic effort to protect vulnerable populations. Having experienced state collapse, societal fragmentation, and a weakened foreign policy over the past two decades, Russia rejects the Western universalist interpretation of R2P in favor of a civilizational perspective that privileges the Kremlin's interpretation of when intervention is or is not legitimate. A close analysis of domestic factors in Russian politics, combined with an understanding of Moscow's newly confident approach to geopolitics, are needed to understand Russia's position as one of the most vocal critics of the Responsibility to Protect.

The articles in this Special Issue derive from a conference on the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) held under the auspices of the Center for American and Global Security at Indiana University–Bloomington, 15–16 May 2015. The studies in this issue variously explore the development of the R2P in the United Nations, assess the role of the International Criminal Court in bringing perpetrators of mass atrocities to justice, introduce a territorial dimension to R2P, and elucidate the current position of non-Western emerging countries, specifically the BRICS, on R2P. The most ardent advocates of the doctrine tend to be from the major English-speaking liberal democracies, although prominent African statesmen were also instrumental in promoting the concept. The Libyan experience prompted a reassessment of R2P, magnifying suspicions that the norm may be simply a Western strategy for enhancing influence and effecting regime change. The idea of state sovereignty as responsibility domestically, and the possibility of international assistance to regimes struggling to protect vulnerable populations, has widespread support in the non-Western world. Coercive measures against predatory regimes are not rejected wholesale, but the BRICS are suspicious of Western motives in advocating forcible intervention and justifiably skeptical that such interventions will do more good than harm.